Cold War, 1945-1990

Introduction

The world viewed World War I as the “war to end all wars,” and then came World War II. It was a conflict that fostered alliances between traditionally ideological enemies. Despite wartime conferences and efforts to address possible postwar problems and areas of contention, the fragile alliance between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, which showed evidence of cracking during the war, fell apart shortly after the war. Analysis of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences—attended by Roosevelt and Truman, respectively—demonstrates a shift from an American willingness to act pragmatically and to establish an acceptable common ground with the Soviets to an American hard-line approach to the spread of Soviet/Communist influence. As the split widened, two definite camps—East and West—emerged. The East encompassed the Soviet Union and eastern European countries—the Warsaw Pact countries. The West included western Europe, Britain, and the United States—countries that formed the NATO Alliance. Before long, two major players—the United States and the Soviet Union—dominated the era. While tensions between the two countries waxed and waned, both participated in proxy wars that allowed these countries to “fight” without actually going to war against each other. Proxy wars included the Chinese Civil War, the Algerian War for Independence, the Indochina Wars, and several others. The last major proxy war after the Vietnam conflict began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Shortly after the conclusion of that conflict, the world witnessed what it thought would never occur—the end of the Cold War. The years 1989–1991 marked the end of a conflict that had been fought for over four decades. Key events from that period include the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the opening of borders between East and West Germany, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As more and more documents are opened to the public, historians are finding a treasure trove of sources that allow them to reassess the Cold War—origins, participants, specific events or “hot” wars, and the end. The items included in this article just touch the surface of the available Cold War historiography.

General Overviews

General works on the Cold War cover a wide range of topics, countries, and time periods. Crowley 2006, an edited work with chapters by leading Cold War historians, is a good starting point for Cold War scholars. Westad set himself apart from other scholars with his international approach to the Cold War (Westad 2007). As is frequently the case, political leaders can make a difference and leave their imprint on an era. Gaddis 2011, a biography of George Kennan, gives informed insight into the man who arguably contributed the most to the United States’ policy of containment, and Kaplan 1999 analyzes the impact of Metternich on Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy. In addition, Kennedy 1991 continues in this vein; the edited volume analyzes political leaders and their development of grand strategy. Some of the chapters directly relate to the Cold War. Bissell, et al. 1996 presents an interesting look, from an insider’s perspective, of the American U-2 program. A number of works—Gaddis 1982 and Mark 2004—focus on US national security policy or specific US Cold War foreign policy with regard to a specific nation, such as Hong Kong. Finally, a recent publication—Harper 2011—provides a sweeping analysis of the Cold War from its causes to its conclusion. All Cold War scholars must, however, consult the recently published Leffler and Westad 2010–2012.

Bissell, Richard Jr., Jonathan E. Lewis, and Frances T. Pudlo. Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
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This is a memoir written by an intelligence officer who participated in numerous important operations. Bissell helped develop “the U-2, the SR-71, and the satellite collection platform.” In addition to chronicling his own achievements, Bissell gives the reader insight into the attitudes that permeated US intelligence organizations.
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Crowley, Robert, ed. The Cold War: A Military History. New York: Random House, 2006.
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This compilation of twenty-six essays is divided into five sections: “First Skirmishes,” “Police Action,” “The Deep Cold War,” “Vietnam: The Long Good-bye,” and “The End.” Leading historians, including David McCullough, Dennis E. Showalter, Douglas Porch, John F. Guilmartin Jr., John Prados, and Williamson Murray, contributed essays about the social, political, and economic connotations of the Cold War’s military history.
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Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
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Gaddis analyzes the US policies designed to “contain” the Soviet Union after World War II. He divides the period into five phases—George Kennan and the new policy of containment, NSC 68, Eisenhower and the New Look, Kennedy and flexible response, and détente. Gaddis argues that Franklin D. Roosevelt should receive the credit for devising the policy of containment.
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Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: Penguin, 2011.
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Gaddis, the leading Cold War historian, has written a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the “Father of Containment Strategy.” Using government documents and personally conducted interviews of Kennan, Gaddis chronicles the life of one of the most influential Cold War statesmen in US history.
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Harper, John Lamberton. The Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Writing over a decade after the end of the Cold War, Harper provides a reassessment of the causes and end of the Cold War. He discusses why the conflict between East and West/the Soviet Union and the US remained “cold,” particularly in Europe. Harper argues that the end of the Cold War should evoke regret rather than feelings of triumph.
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Kaplan, Robert D. “Kissinger, Metternich, and Realism.” Atlantic Monthly 283.6 (June 1999): 72–82.
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Kaplan argues that Kissinger’s experience with Nazism and Munich shaped his ideas, writing, and worldview, that he was a realist, and that Metternich’s influence is evident in Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy.
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Kennedy, Paul M., ed. Grand Strategies in War and Peace. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
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Making a major contribution, Kennedy defines grand strategy as the ability of political leaders to utilize all of a nation’s resources to achieve long-term goals. The volume includes essays by leading historians—Michael Howard, Dennis Showalter, Douglas Porch, Condoleezza Rice—who contribute to an understanding of grand strategy.
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Leffler, Melvyn, and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War. 3 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010–2012.
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Series brings together leading Cold War historians. Volume 1 focuses on the origins, causes, and early years of the Cold War. Volume 2 examines the Cold War as an “international system” in the 1960s and 1970s. The final volume explores the end of the Cold War—from the Helsinki Conference of 1975 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
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Mark, Chi-kwan. Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations 1949–1957. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Mark investigates the intersection of British and American early Cold War policies regarding Hong Kong. He evaluates the Anglo-American alliance and the Cold War problems with small allies. While Britain only viewed it as an economically valuable colony, Hong Kong played a strategically important role in US efforts to contain China.
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Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Providing a revisionist interpretation of the Cold War, Westad argues that the key factors that shaped the Cold War were not military or strategic. Political and social developments in the Third World left their marks on the Cold War. He dismisses the prevailing view that the USSR–US contest for military and strategic power dominated the Cold War.
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Soviet Union

As the other major player during the Cold War, the Soviet Union has garnered lots of attention from historians. In recent years analyses by Soviet historians have become more readily available. Works designed to fill the gap in the Soviet-perspective historiography include Haslam 2011, Kennedy-Pipe 1995, and Zubok 2007. While Aga Rossi and Zaslavsky 2011 focuses on the Soviet Union and Italy in its discussions of the origins of the Cold War, Hasanli 2011 focuses on the Soviet Union and the Azerbaijan crisis in Turkey. Two works—Sarin and Dvoretsky 1996 and Powaski 1997—argue that the origins of the Cold War can be traced back to 1917 and 1919, respectively, and challenge researchers to analyze the Cold War from a new perspective.

Aga Rossi, Elena, and Victor Zaslavsky. Stalin and Togliatti: Italy and the Origins of the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
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Originally published in Italian, Stalin and Togliatti highlights the complex relationship that existed between the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union in the early Cold War. Although the Italian Communist Party looked to the Soviets for guidance, Stalin put Soviet foreign interests over those of the Italian Communist Party.
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Hasanli, Jamil. Stalin and the Turkish Crisis of the Cold War, 1945–1953. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011.
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Part of the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Hasanli’s book traces the contentious Soviet–Turkish relationship during World War II and the early Cold War. Hasanli focuses on the crisis over Azerbaijan that resulted in Turkey joining NATO, and he highlights Stalin’s efforts to repaint the image of Turkey from a friend to an enemy of the Soviet people.
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Haslam, Jonathan. Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
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In an effort to fill a gap in the prevailing Cold War historiography, which generally focuses on a Western perspective, Haslam presents the other side. Using archival material from numerous countries, including Russia, he analyzes East–West relations from 1917 to 1989. Haslam discusses the ways in which the Soviets exploited Western weaknesses.
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Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline. Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943–1956. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995.
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Relying on Russian sources, Kennedy-Pipe presents the Soviet perspective of the Cold War’s beginning. She contests traditional Western-centric historiography and argues that Soviet World War II relations with the United States and Europe contributed to a policy that was shaped by more than anti-Americanism. Stalin’s Cold War participates in the Cold War causes debate.
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Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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Powaski examines the contentious relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union within the broader context of the Cold War. He argues that the Cold War “crystallized” because of the divergent paths taken by the two nations after 1917 and that the origins of the Cold War were rooted in Czarist Russia and the “infancy” of the United States.
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Sarin, Oleg, and Lev Dvoretsky. Alien Wars: The Soviet Union’s Aggressions against the World, 1919 to 1989. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1996.
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The authors, former Soviet military officers, strive to relate the Soviet Union’s military history. Although clearly stating the Soviet Union’s end goal, the authors overstate the commitment to “expansionist campaigns.” A good starting point, but not the definitive study.
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Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
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Despite the title, Zubok’s book is not really about empire, failed or otherwise. Zubok chronicles Soviet leaders’ relationships with the United States from World War II until the USSR’s dissolution. Zubok provides an important analysis of the difficulties of policymaking.
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United States

A wealth of scholarship about the United States and the Cold War exists. The few mentioned here should be considered a starting point, not an endgame. While he discusses foreign policy throughout the history of the US, Kissinger’s chapters are enlightening and were shaped by his own contributions to US Cold War diplomacy (Kissinger 1994). Not as sweeping, but offering a more detailed analysis of Carter’s foreign policy is Smith 1986. Equally narrow in focus, Brogi 2011 analyzes the Cold War struggle between French and Italian Communists on the one hand and the US on the other. Written by a leading Cold War historian, Gaddis 1992 targets the end of the Cold War and discusses its implications. In an effort to bring a new look at traditional interpretations of the Cold War, Leffler 2008 examines the way that key leaders reconfigured American–Soviet relations.

Brogi, Alessandro. Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
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Brogi argues that political opposition in France and Italy forced the United States to reconsider its strategies to combat communism, its image, and what its “liberal capitalist culture and ideology” meant. Conversely, he argues that the resistance to Americanism by Italian and French Communist Parties provided a test for their “legitimacy and existence.”
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Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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A collection of published essays that provide a critical assessment of the Cold War from its beginning until its abrupt end. Gaddis argues that the shift from military to economic power, the collapse of the Soviet economy, and Gorbachev’s unwillingness to use brutal force to save the Soviet structure propelled the declining Cold War to its final conclusion.
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Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
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Kissinger’s monograph covers diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the second half of the book is what is most important to Cold War historians. He focuses on world leaders, how they shaped the current world, and the ways in which US diplomacy is different from that of other nations.
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Leffler, Melvyn. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008.
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In order to assess why the Cold War started, lasted as long as it did, and ended in 1991, Leffler analyzes four crucial episodes when efforts by American and Soviet officials to avoid hostilities failed. Leffler argues that Reagan, Bush, and Gorbachev broke with past policies and reshaped American–Soviet relations.
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Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986.
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Smith discusses Carter’s major foreign policy challenges that were complicated by public opinion. He argues that Carter achieved success on only one of three critical fronts—moral goals, but not with the economy or national security. Although other factors impeded success, Smith places the failures at Carter’s door and blames them on the president’s personality and character.
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Cold War Conflicts

While many scholars view the Cold War in terms of tension primarily between the United States and the Soviet Union, several proxy wars, with varying consequences, erupted during this period. This section is subdivided by conflict and includes: Afghanistan, the Algerian War of Independence, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall Crisis, Iran, the Korean War, the Middle East, and the Vietnam War.

Afghanistan

Some of the problems in Afghanistan have their roots in the conflict that erupted following the Soviet invasion. A number of recent works—Braithwaite 2011, Hermes 2010, Kakar 1997, and Feifer 2009—make important contributions to the existing historiography and raise questions for future analysis.

Braithwaite, Rodric. Afghansty: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Relying on Russian sources and interviews, Braithwaite allows the participants to help construct the narrative about the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan. He argues that Cold War propaganda distorted perceptions of the Soviet–Afghan war.
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Feifer, Gregory. The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. New York: Harper, 2009.
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Feifer, a former Moscow correspondent for National Public Radio, used soldiers’ perspectives to describe the Soviet–Afghan War. Feifer argues that the conflict was more complex than the typical American perception that the Soviet invasion was “a naked act of aggression by a ruthless, totalitarian state.”
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Hermes, Andrew John. “Chairman Brezhnev’s Afghan War: The Last Act of the Man Who Destroyed the Soviet Union.” MA diss., University of Nebraska at Kearney, 2010.
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Using the Soviet–Afghan War as a case study, Hermes argues that the Brezhnev era was harmful to the Soviet Union. He contends that both Soviet policies and the decision to hide the war from the Soviet population proved harmful to the soldiers who were fighting in the war.
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Kakar, M. Hasan. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
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An Afghani native, Kakar brings a unique perspective to his account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent war. He participated in resistance movements during the war and the civil war that followed. His description of the post-1992 period and his assessment of political figures contribute to an understanding of why civil war has continued to plague Afghanistan.
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Algerian War of Independence

As things were winding down for the French in Indochina, they were heating up in another colony—Algeria. The historiography of the Algerian War of Independence is rich and is getting richer as more and more historians focus on this conflict, on the groups of people involved, and on the issues raised by displacement. The following works provide an excellent starting point for additional research into this topic. Connelly (Connelly 2000, Connelly 2003) places the Algerian War in a Cold War context and places the seeds of the post–Cold War era in this conflict. Beers 2011 analyzes the culture of the French military during the conflict, and Connelly 2001 addresses issues of decolonization.

Beers, Wynne M. “French Army Strategy and Strategic Culture during the Algerian War, 1954–1958.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011.
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Analyzing French military leadership in the first half of the Algeria War, Beers argues that the strategic culture of an army can be an “expression of a way of war.” Such a study “provides a suitable synthetic approach by which historians and strategists can answer questions concerning how and why commanders in the field wage war at their level.”
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Connelly, Matthew. “Taking Off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North–South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence.” American Historical Review 105.3 (June 2000): 739–769.
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Lamenting the gap in imperial historiography, Connelly argues that the “ongoing critique of orientalism” has diverged from its original focus. Refocusing on the “exercise of state power” would facilitate a constructive dialogue between diplomatic history and postcolonial studies. In addition, he argues that the “Cold War lens” was the result of historians’ perceptions, not those of Eisenhower or his contemporaries.
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Connelly, Matthew. “Rethinking the Cold War and Decolonization: The Grand Strategy of the Algerian War for Independence.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33.2 (May 2001): 221–245.
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Connelly analyzes how anti-nationalists handled Cold War challenges as they developed their foreign policies. He argues that “years before the Algerians launched their fight for independence, they had planned to harness the Cold War to their cause.” They exploited international tensions. Rather than being great power pawns, Connelly argues, “the Algerians rewrote the rules of the game.”
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Connelly, Matthew. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post–Cold War Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Connelly describes the war in an international context and examines the political leaders, the social cause for revolution, and the contentious peace negotiations. He argues that the Algerian war was an international conflict, that it affected the international system, and that it helps explain the “ongoing transformation of international politics.”
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Berlin Airlift

In 1948 the first post–World War II crisis—perhaps the first Cold War crisis—resulted from action taken by the Western Allies that provoked a particular response from the Soviets. The United States, Britain, and France took steps toward unifying their zones in Germany. Consequently, the Soviets blocked road and rail access to and from Berlin and cut off electricity to West Berlin. As tensions increased, the United States launched a major relief effort—the Berlin Airlift. Championed as a demonstration of American power, the Berlin Airlift has been investigated and analyzed since its occurrence. Burgan 2008, a brief overview, sets the context for other scholarship. Works that delve deeply into the events prior to the airlift include Giangreco and Griffin 1988. Parrish 1998 provides a good operational account while Harrington 2012 and Miller 2008 provide an analysis of the crisis from the seeds that sparked it to its aftermath. Shlaim uses the Berlin Airlift as a case study in his analysis of how statesmen act and what decisions they make in times of crisis (Shlaim 1983), and Schrader 2008 examines the changing relationship between former enemies that occurred during the crisis. Paeffgen 1979 focuses on what allowed the United States to exercise restraint rather than revert to war in order to protect access to Berlin.

Burgan, Michael. The Berlin Airlift: Breaking the Soviet Blockade. San Francisco: Compass Point, 2008.
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Burgan gives a brief overview of the Berlin Airlift. He provides context by discussing the war and the division of Berlin after the conflict. Less useful for research than for general information, and its target audience is an unsophisticated one.
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Giangreco, D. M., and Robert E. Griffin. Airbridge to Berlin: The Berlin Crisis of 1948, Its Origins and Aftermath. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988.
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Giangreco and Griffin’s title aptly describes the content of their book. Approximately half of the book covers the period before the airlift commenced, and the authors devote the final chapter to the aftermath of the airlift. This book provides a good overview of the crisis and the American solution—the airlift.
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Harrington, Daniel F. Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012.
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Harrington analyzes the Berlin crisis from the first seeds until the 1949 Paris Council of Foreign Ministers. He asserts that the beginning of the crisis can be traced back to the occupation plans that were determined during World War II. Harrington argues that credit for the successful airlift goes to pilots, mechanics, and Berliners, not to the decision makers.
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Miller, Roger G. To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2008.
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Similar to accounts in other texts, Miller’s monograph covers the Berlin crisis from its roots through its aftermath. Miller goes a step further, however, and analyzes the lessons learned for modern military airlifts.
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Paeffgen, Hans-Ludwig. “The Berlin Blockade and Airlift: A Study of American Diplomacy.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1979.
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Paeffgen argues that the beginning of the inevitable conflict between East and West was the decision to implement a “reintegrationist” policy rather than one with exclusively punitive features with regard to Germany. He also contends that the United States was able to exercise restrained resistance because it accurately assessed Soviet military strength.
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Parrish, Thomas. Berlin in the Balance, 1945–1949: The Blockade, the Airlift, the First Major Battle of the Cold War. Reading, MA: Perseus, 1998.
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Parrish places the Berlin crisis into a Cold War context and analyzes the operational development of the airlift. While he fails to resolve the larger questions about the Soviet motivation for the blockades, Parrish presents a thoughtful assessment of the airlift. He argues that it was an attempt to “redeem a bankrupt political situation through technical and mechanical means.”
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Schrader, Helena P. The Blockade Breakers: The Berlin Airlift. Stroud, UK: History Press, 2008.
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Schrader does more than analyze the Berlin Airlift; she also evaluates the changing relationship in which a former enemy became an ally. Two themes—the airlift’s logistical challenges and the intricate relationship that developed between the Berliners and the Western Allies—form the basis for Schrader’s assessment.
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Shlaim, Avi. The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
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In addition to discussing the Berlin crisis, including the pre- and post-crisis, Shlaim analyzes the ways in which statesmen behave in times of crisis. He argues that, despite their differences, crises generally have “some recurrent patterns and common properties.” Shlaim focuses just as much on the patterns as on the crisis.
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Berlin Wall Crisis

The construction of the Berlin wall by the Soviets and East Germans, which drastically reduced the exchange between East and West, increased Cold War tensions and threatened to take the situation to new levels. Ausland 1996 analyzes this event in the context of a Berlin–Cuba crisis, 1961–1964. The construction of the wall affected and shaped relationships between political leaders as evidenced by Burridge 2011, Gearson 1998, and Newman 2007. Ross 2002 examines the impact of the exodus prior to the wall’s construction, and Gearson and Schake 2002 compiles a series of essays that discuss Cold War alliances through the lens of the Berlin wall crisis.

Ausland, John C. Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Berlin–Cuba Crisis, 1961–64. Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press, 1996.
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This is a firsthand account of the Berlin–Cuba crisis by Ausland, who held two different positions on the Berlin Task Force—member and deputy director. The Berlin Task Force was the interagency organization tasked with coordinating the United States’ Berlin policy.
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Burridge, John T. Kennedy and Khrushchev: The New Frontier in Berlin. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
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Burridge takes Kennedy to task for not living up to the promise made in his speech at the wall and argues that he tolerated human rights violations. He argues that the United States was culpable in the “undoing of the human rights” that it had pledged to support.
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Gearson, John P. S. Harold Macmillan and the Berlin Wall Crisis, 1958–62: The Limits of Interests and Force. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998.
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By reassessing Macmillan’s “vacillating response” to the deadline imposed by Khrushchev, Gearson takes an important place in the historiography. He analyzes the crisis in an international context, and he provides insight into the British perspective and British Cold War foreign policy. He argues that the crisis had an impact on Macmillan’s honest efforts to mediate between East and West.
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Gearson, John, and Kori Schake, eds. The Berlin Wall Crisis: Perspectives on Cold War Alliances. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002.
DOI: 10.1057/9781403919489Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Recently released records allow the authors to present revised perspectives of the Berlin wall crisis. Taken as a whole, this volume makes an important contribution to Berlin wall crisis historiography. Contributors include Lawrence Freedman, Gregory Pedlow, and Hope Harrison, whose chapters promise to spark heated debate.
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Newman, Kitty. Macmillan, Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis, 1958–1960. London: Routledge, 2007.
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Newman presents a new interpretation of British and Soviet leaders’ efforts to negotiate a compromised resolution to the Berlin crisis. She argues that Macmillan convinced Khrushchev to go the extra mile when the two met in Moscow. While Macmillan worked to get the West to soften its position, Khrushchev remained committed to preventing a nuclearized Germany.
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Ross, Corey. “Before the Wall: East Germans, Communist Authority, and the Mass Exodus to the West.” Historical Journal 45.2 (June 2002): 459–480.
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Ross analyzes the impact of the mass exodus of Germans from the East to the West prior to the Berlin wall construction. He argues that the exodus undercut the government’s control over internal affairs and “that the refugees to the West were not the only East Germans to capitalize on the permeable border around West Berlin.”
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Chile

Two books about Allende’s election to power in Chile during the Cold War—Harmer 2011 and Qureshi 2009—add significantly to the understanding of US opposition and response to an Allende-led Chile.

Harmer, Tanya. Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
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While Castro applauded Allende’s election as Chile’s president, Nixon pledged to bring him down. A three-year battle resulted in a military coup and a twenty-year dictatorship. Harmer argues that the Chilean battle helped dictate the future of Latin America and that, rather than the US–Soviet conflict, the US–Latin American conflict shaped it.
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Qureshi, Lubna Z. Nixon, Kissenger, and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009.
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Qureshi argues that Nixon and Kissinger were more concerned about the threat to US hegemony posed by the election of Allende than about its threat to the physical security of the United States. They feared that Allende-like candidates would subsequently be elected in other Latin American countries, which would undermine the US hegemony.
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Chinese Civil War and Beyond

While much of the Cold War scholarship has focused on the superpowers, the civil war in China has not been neglected. Most studies focus on the major players in China, but May 2002 recognizes that countries such as the United States had to decide whether or not to intervene and what level that intervention might take. Drawing on his own experiences, the author of Topping 2010 provides an eyewitness account of the conflict. Westad 1990 traces the origins of the civil war to a contentious US–Soviet relationship, and Lynch 2010 provides a good overview of the conflict, whose origin, Lynch suggests, dates back to 1927. Westad 2003 questions why the civil war occurred and assesses its outcomes while Cheng 2005 presents interesting, important work on the Chinese perspective of the conflict. A monograph that covers the civil war and beyond, Chen 2001 uses an analysis of Mao’s behavior to shed light on the Chinese Communist Revolution during and after the civil war.

Chen, Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
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Example of new Cold War history. Chen relies on primary Chinese sources to analyze Mao’s Cold War behavior. He argues that Mao based decisions on furthering “continuous revolution” and his own political power and used “victimhood” to rally public support.
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Cheng, Victor Shiu Chiang. “Imagining China’s Madrid in Manchuria: The Chinese Military Strategy at the Onset of the Chinese Civil War, 1945–1946.” Modern China 31.1 (January 2005): 72–114.
DOI: 10.1177/0097700404270549Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Cheng provides an interdisciplinary study of the Chinese Communist Party’s military decisions and focuses on its strategic culture—“their desire for a decisive battle, their expectation of a short war, and their propensity for preemptive strikes.” He argues that normative and material factors persuaded CCP policymakers to accept risk in 1946 that erupted into a three-year conflict.
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Lynch, Michael. The Chinese Civil War 1945–49. Long Island City, NY: Osprey, 2010.
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Lynch’s concise overview chronicles the Chinese civil war, which culminated in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Lynch contends that the civil war, which began in 1927 as a result of clashes between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, lasted twenty-three years.
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May, Ernest R. “1947–48: When Marshall Kept the U.S. out of War in China.” Journal of Military History 66.4 (October 2002): 1001–1010.
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May suggests that the Cold War can be chronicled through the decisions made by the major players, and he discusses the US decision not to take active part in the Chinese civil war. He argues that Secretary of State George C. Marshall was primarily responsible for that decision.
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Topping, Seymour. On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent’s Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.
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A foreign correspondent for almost four decades, Topping relies upon his own experiences to discuss the East–West crisis in Asia and eastern Europe and to chronicle America’s Cold War successes and defeats. Not only did Topping report the news, but he also gained insights and became a participant in international diplomacy.
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Westad, Odd Arne. “Cold War and Revolution: Soviet–American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 1944–1946.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1990.
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Focusing on the two primary Chinese parties—the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party—Westad demonstrates that the rise of the Cold War in the region intersected with Chinese diplomacy and policy. He argues that the actions of the four powers involved were intertwined and contributed to the turn of events that led to civil war.
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Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
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One of the key 20th-century conflicts, according to Westad, was the Chinese Civil War. In addition to discussing several aspects of the war, Westad intends to answer two questions—Why was the Chinese civil war fought? What were the effects—short term and long term—of the Communist victory?
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Czechoslovakia and Prague Spring

Before Arab Spring, there was Prague Spring, which was a challenge to Soviet control of an Eastern Bloc country. The world watched as Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to crush the rebellion. Bischof, et al. 2010 is an edited collection of essays reassessing the Soviet decision to invade Czechoslovakia. The opening of the Warsaw Pact archives sparked new questions about the event and led to a second compilation of essays—Stolarik 2010. Williams 1997 not only chronicles Prague Spring, but also analyzes its aftermath. All of these books provide interesting perspectives of a pivotal event in Cold War history and are an excellent starting point for research.

Bischof, Günter, Stefan Karner, and Peter Ruggenthaler, eds. The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010.
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Leading American and European historians reassess a major turning point in Cold War history from Brezhnev’s reluctance to use military force to the Soviet Politburo’s conclusion that the only viable option left was military force to the lackluster US response to the outcome of the action taken by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact member countries.
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Stolarik, M. Mark, ed. The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968: Forty Years Later. Papers presented at an international conference held at the University of Ottawa, 9–10 October 2008. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2010.
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This is the culmination of a meeting of historians to reassess and ask new questions about Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact’s response. The opening of Warsaw Pact archives in 1989 allowed the authors access to new information. Stolank’s edited volume is a crucial resource for historians studying this pivotal Cold War event.
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Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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Williams chronicles the story of the Prague Spring through the lens of elite politics and challenges the prevailing historical view that Soviet leadership was divided over the appropriate response to events in Prague. Williams argues that the preoccupation with determining what the Czechs and Slovaks were doing dictated the pace of the Soviet response.
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Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Following the fifty-year anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, new assessments of the event joined the existing historiography. Noted publications include Congdon, et al. 2006, a collection of essays that evaluate this pivotal Cold War event from various perspectives, and several books—Lessing 2006, Matthews 2007, and Sebestyen 2007—written by men who were personally connected in some way to the events of 1956.

Congdon, Lee, Béla K. Király, and Károly Nagy, eds. 1956: The Hungarian Revolution and War for Independence. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2006.
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The contributors to this volume discuss different aspects of a pivotal Cold War event—the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Not only did it influence Western public opinion, but it also confirmed that the East/West divide would remain unchanged. Collectively the chapters argue that Hungarians finally achieved the revolution’s goals from 1989 to 1991.
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Lessing, Erich. Revolution in Hungary: The 1956 Budapest Uprising. London: Thames & Hudson, 2006.
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The first photographer on the scene, Lessing uses photographs to chronicle the 1956 Budapest Uprising. These photographs provide the context for historians who have been analyzing the Hungarian Revolution for five decades.
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Matthews, John P. C. Explosion: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. New York: Hippocrene, 2007.
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Matthews presents a comprehensive narrative about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Although not a historian, Matthews brings a unique perspective to the table. A journalist with Radio Free Europe at the time, he relies upon his own news reports and memoirs to construct the narrative.
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Sebestyen, Victor. Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. New York: Vintage, 2007.
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Sebestyen, whose family fled from Hungary, used several types of sources—newly available Soviet and Hungarian documents, family diaries, and testimony from eyewitnesses—to construct a new account of a pivotal moment in Hungarian history. He argues that Western anti-Communist rhetoric persuaded the rebels to take action and that their action would be supported by the West.
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Iran

Iran was the site of early Cold War confrontations, and monographs on the period illuminate a number of issues that fueled a tense situation. While Blake 2009 focuses on the US–Soviet rivalry in Iran during the first few decades of the Cold War, Fawcett 2009 and Hasanli 2006 chronicle a key Iranian crisis—the Azerbaijan crisis. Marsh 2003, on the other hand, cuts to the chase and argues that, as is the case today, oil was at the center of the Cold War crisis in Iran.

Blake, Kristen. The U.S.–Soviet Confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962: A Case Study in the Annals of the Cold War. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.
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Covering the period 1945–1962, Blake analyzes the conclusion of the Soviet–US rivalry in Iran and the ways in which it affected that nation’s political and economic development. In addition, Blake weaves the story of the evolution of US–Iranian relations into the narrative.
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Fawcett, Louise L’Estrange. Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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Fawcett examines a landmark crisis of the early Cold War. She argues that the Azerbaijan crisis shaped the development of Iranian politics. Not only does Fawcett focus on the domestic aspects of the crisis, but she also delves into the roles of the three external powers—the Soviet Union, United States, and Britain—and the impact of their policies on Iran.
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Hasanli, Jamil. At the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet–American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
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Hasanli argues that the Azerbaijan crisis, which marked the commencement of the Cold War, brought the Soviet Union into conflict with the United States and Britain for the first time after WWII and undermined their wartime cooperation. Examining this complex crisis from several perspectives, Hasanli argues that understanding this event is crucial to understanding the Cold War.
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Marsh, Steve. Anglo-American Relations and Cold War Oil: Crisis in Iran. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
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In focusing on the conflict between the Iranian Government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), Marsh argues that the differences between the other two players—Britain and the United States—were more than tactical. They “represented a fundamental clash of priorities.” Britain and the United States wanted different resolutions to the oil crisis in Iran.
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Korean War

Also called “America’s Forgotten War,” the Korean War, according to historians, frequently gets short shrift because other wars, such as World War II, were more exciting, were victories. What was the Korean War—a victory or a defeat? Analysis of the Korean War, arguably the first conflict of the Cold War, is crucial. Hastings 1988 presents a detailed account of the conflict from different perspectives. Stueck 1997 is an international narrative of the war. Recently, the floodgates have begun to open. Boyd 2007 examines a related intelligence operation—Broken Reed—and Cumings 2011 argues that historians need to analyze the war in Korea in broader terms that place it within the context of Cold War Asian conflicts. Perhaps the most important contribution to Korean War historiography comes from Millett (Millett 2005, Millett 2010), who has published the first two volumes of a trilogy on the conflict.

Boyd, Arthur L. Operation Broken Reed: Truman’s Secret North Korean Spy Mission That Averted World War III. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2007.
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In 1951, needing more information before widening the war, Truman authorized a mission to gather intelligence about North Korean and Chinese military capabilities—Operation Broken Reed. Because of the intelligence gathered, Truman decided against escalation. Boyd argues that the crucial intelligence obtained averted World War III.
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Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2011.
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Cumings argues that, while the Korean War lasted only a short time for the Americans, it was part of a much longer conflict in Asia and that the conflict still overshadows events in Korea. He also contends that the Korean War had its origins in a civil war that was a byproduct of Japanese occupation during World War II. Reprint.
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Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
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Hastings relies upon interviews of over 200 Korean War vets—American, Korean, and Chinese—to craft a narrative of officers, battles, and US strategic and political policies. He identifies the lessons that should have been learned from the war that was “the prelude to Vietnam.” This is a good source of first-hand accounts.
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Millett, Allan R. The War for Korea, 1945–1950: A House Burning. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.
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This is the first volume of a three-volume narrative about the Korean War. In this volume, Millett contends that the war was more than democracy versus communism. He argues that “first and foremost” it was a civil war between Koreans and that it began in 1948, not 1950 when the North Koreans invaded South Korea.
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Millett, Allan R. The War for Korea, 1950–1951: They Came From the North. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
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This is the second volume of a three-volume narrative about the Korean War. In this volume, Millett traces events from the invasion in June 1950 through “the most active phase of the Korean War”—the end of June 1951. He examines military tactics and operations through a Cold War lens while weaving both domestic and foreign events into the narrative.
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Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
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Drawing upon sources from seven countries, Stueck constructs an international narrative of the Korean War. He examines the diplomacy of the war and argues that, as the first Cold War conflict, the Korean War “functioned as a substitute for World War III.”
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Middle East

Not much of the prevailing historiography examines Cold War Middle East conflicts. Oren 2002 is a refreshing exception and is a must read for students investigating unrest in the Middle East during the Cold War, particularly in light of recent unrest in the region.

Oren, Michael B. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Oren provides a comprehensive analysis of the Six Day War and argues that the war has never really reached a conclusion. Every conflict that has occurred in the Middle East since 1967 has its roots in the Six Day War. Oren’s book is an excellent starting point for scholars interested in Middle East conflict.
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Vietnam War

Accounts of the Vietnam War line bookstore and library shelves. Some focus on narrow aspects of the war while others analyze the war in a Cold War context. The works included here provide important starting points for additional research. Bradley and Young 2008 challenges historians to make sense of the Vietnam War from several perspectives. Jones 2004 argues that two assassinations actually caused the Vietnam War to last another decade. Although most books, especially those published in the United States, evaluate the conflict from an American perspective, O’Dowd 2007 assesses the Third Indochina War and challenges causes identified by the prevailing historiography. Several books provide a perspective of the war from the CIA and other intelligence units. Key among those are Ford 1998, Gillespie 2011, and Wirtz 1994. All research into the Vietnam War should include Karnow 1997 and Herring 2002.

Bradley, Mark Philip, and Marilyn B. Young, eds. Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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Bradley and Young have compiled a volume that includes chapters by leading Vietnam War historians. The authors “examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that have marked the contested terrain of Vietnam War scholarship,” and as a result, this volume makes an important contribution to the historiography.
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Ford, Harold F. CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes 1962–1968. Washington, DC: CIA, 1998.
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Written by a former CIA officer, this book analyzes the CIA’s performance in Vietnam during the war. Focusing on the analysts, Ford examines three episodes to make broader conclusions about their work.
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Gillespie, Robert M. Black Ops, Vietnam: An Operational History of MACVSOG. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2011.
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An insightful examination of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group¸ a highly classified joint-services organization. Units included Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps reconnaissance units, Air Force units, and CIA operatives. MACVSOG participated in numerous operations, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Tet Offensive, and operations into Cambodia among others.
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Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. 4th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
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A standard text, Herring presents a clear, concise narrative that provides context for any research into the Vietnam War. Herring integrates an analysis of military, diplomatic, and political factors into a complete, balanced narrative.
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Jones, Howard. Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176056.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Jones argues that Kennedy opened a Pandora’s box when he approved a coup that he believed would facilitate US military withdrawal from Vietnam. Instead the coup fueled political chaos and hindered any plans to extract US troops. Because he was assassinated, historians will never know how Kennedy would have handled post-coup events in Vietnam.
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Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Penguin, 1997.
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A groundbreaking narrative, this work “demystifies” the Vietnam War tragedy. Relying upon previously used documents and interviews, Karnow brings clarity and analysis to one of the most contentious conflicts in American history. A must read for all researchers.
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O’Dowd, Edward C. Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War. London: Routledge, 2007.
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O’Dowd focuses on the Sino-Vietnamese War and contests prevailing interpretations about the reason for the war. He suggests that border issues did not cause this conflict. Rather, O’Dowd argues that Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge provided the spark. Although he acknowledges US and ASEAN support for the Cambodian government, O’Dowd’s main focus remains the conflict between China and Vietnam.
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Wirtz, James J. The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
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Describing the Tet Offensive from start to finish, Wirtz addresses why US forces were surprised by the Vietnamese attack. Relying upon declassified documents, Wirtz constructs a narrative of “one of the worst intelligence failures in American history.” Although they had warning of the impending attack American and South Vietnamese officers miscalculated the timing and extensive coordination of the enemy effort.
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Africa

Africa provided an intersection between Cold War proxy wars and anti-colonial independence wars. Westad 2007 is a good overview of intervention by Cold War powers into Third World countries. While the geographic span is broad, there are chapters related to Africa. Two works—Onslow 2009 and Shubin 2008—are a good starting point for research into Cold War conflicts in southern Africa. Investigation into Congo’s fight for independence and American involvement in that conflict should begin with Devlin 2008 and Kalb 1982.

Devlin, Lawrence. Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in the Hot Zone. New York: Public Affairs, 2008.
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Devlin, the CIA’s station chief, relies upon first-hand observations and activities to chronicle the Congo’s tumultuous fight for independence and acknowledges his role in the events as they unfolded. This autobiography is a good starting point for an examination of America’s involvement in Congo’s fight for independence.
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Kalb, Madeleine G. Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy. New York: Macmillan, 1982.
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Kalb adds a new dimension to scholarship related to the United States and Congo’s fight for independence by providing information gleaned from diplomatic cables obtained through FOIA requests. She argues that the anticolonial outbursts, viewed as radical by Eisenhower, prompted him to authorize intervention. Important companion to Devlin 2008.
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Onslow, Sue, ed. Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation. New York: Routledge, 2009.
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A collection of essays that address decolonization and race from a number of perspectives in the context of the Cold War. By focusing on the struggle between white minority governments and black liberation movements, the authors highlight the efforts of the actors to gain external support from both the Soviet bloc and the Western Allies. Key research starting point.
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Shubin, Vladimir Gennadyevich. The Hot “Cold War”: The USSR in Southern Africa. London: Pluto, 2008.
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Shubin places independence movements in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe into a broader Cold War context. Included in his analysis are both internal violence and foreign intervention into conflicted countries. Drawing upon his own experiences as well as documentary sources, Shubin presents a Soviet perspective of the Cold War in southern Africa.
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Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Westad argues that the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union laid the cornerstone for current international conflicts. Ideology encouraged the intervention of the United States and the Soviet Union in Third World revolutions. Westad analyzes their intervention in a number of countries—Ethiopia and Congo—and the long-term consequences of that involvement.
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Cuba

For the United States, Cuba, which lay ninety miles from the southern tip of Florida, was an island nation to watch carefully, particularly during the Cold War. The revolution that brought Fidel Castro—a Communist—to power was a particular concern. As a result, plans to land Cuban opponents to Castro on the island in an effort to overthrow the dictator began under the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower. President John F. Kennedy authorized the operation that is widely known as the Bay of Pigs. This fiasco was followed a short time later by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cold War historiography related to Cuba is divided into three categories: Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Cuban Revolution.

Bay of Pigs

The failed Bay of Pigs operation has long been part of United States’ historical memory, and historians have not hesitated to analyze this event, particularly in terms of responsibility. Trest and Dodd 2001 highlights a little known story with the narration of the Alabama Air National Guard’s participation in the operation, and Lynch, a participant, argues that he and the others were betrayed (Lynch 2000). Higgins 1989 suggests that historians should consider why the CIA thought an effort to overthrow Castro would succeed. With the opening of CIA files, a number of historians—Jones, Kornbluh, and Rasenberger—have been able to provide insight that previous accounts have lacked (see Jones 2010, Kornbluh 1998, and Rasenberger 2011). Perhaps the most important works that add to an understanding of the Bay of Pigs is the recently released four-volume CIA official history by the CIA History Office Staff and Pfeiffer 2011.

CIA History Office Staff and Jack B. Pfeiffer. CIA Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Vols. 1–4. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2011.
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In 2011 the CIA was forced under the FOIA to release its four-volume Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Volume 1 is entitled Air Operations, March 1960–April 1961; Volume 2 Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy; Volume 3 Evolution of CIA’s Anti-Castro Policies, 1959–January 1961; and Volume 4 The Taylor Committee Investigation of the Bay of Pigs.
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Higgins, Trumbull. The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
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Higgins sets the context for the Bay of Pigs by discussing the event that signaled CIA success in covert operations—Guatemala 1954. He unravels the convoluted plan for an operation “too big to be a raid and too small to be an invasion.” Useful for an overview, but footnotes are problematic.
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Jones, Howard. The Bay of Pigs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Relying upon recently released CIA records, Jones crafts a narrative of the failed coup attempt against Fidel Castro in April 1961. Jones traces the operation from beginning to end, argues that the Bay of Pigs set the course of Kennedy’s foreign policy, and explains his response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Kornbluh, Peter, ed. Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. New York: New Press, 1998.
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Following the failed Bay of Pigs operation, CIA Inspector-General Lyman Kirkpatrick wrote an after-action assessment. This document, which was only recently released under FIOA, provides a critical analysis of the players, the operation, and the secret intelligence world. Kornbluh’s book is crucial for historians researching the Bay of Pigs.
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Lynch, Grayston L. Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs. Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2000.
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Lynch, who was a participant in the operation, brings a unique perspective to his account. As his title indicates, he argues that a betrayal occurred and he points his finger at the Kennedy administration. While he has an ax to grind, Lynch’s book is important for those researching this topic.
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Rasenberger, Jim. The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. New York: Scribner, 2011.
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Declassified CIA files inform Rasenberger’s account of the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Rasenberger focuses on the major political players—Eisenhower, Kennedy, Dulles, and Bissell—and suggests that perhaps the CIA manipulated Kennedy. He argues that the Bay of Pigs led to additional problems—the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and Kennedy’s assassination.
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Trest, Warren, and Donald Dodd. Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard’s Covert Role at the Bay of Pigs. Montgomery, AL: New South, 2001.
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Republished to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs. Trest and Dodd chronicle the deeds of four Alabama Air National Guardsmen who lost their lives during the operation and who remained unrecognized by the CIA for forty years. Wings of Denial aims to reveal the cover-up.
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Cuban Missile Crisis

Books about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the way that Kennedy and Khrushchev handled the situation have been plentiful since the event occurred. Over the past couple of decades, the release of CIA and other files has sparked a new round of interpretations. Blight and Welch (Blight and Welch 1990, Blight and Welch 1998), Dobbs 2009, Flank 2010, Frankel 2004, Fursenko and Naftali 1998, Munton and Welch 2011, and Stern 2005 all provide perspectives and interpretations that are essential for an understanding of this pivotal event in US–Soviet relations. Although most of these accounts rely exclusively on US sources and emphasize the event from an American perspective, they all contribute to the prevailing historiography and ask the scholar to reconsider traditional interpretations of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Blight, James G., and David A. Welch. On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990.
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This book, the culmination of conferences and interviews, is the result of an effort to have a dialogue between American and Soviet scholars about their interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The authors’ term the research method used “critical oral history.” While oral history provides the basis for the book, the authors issue warnings about the pitfalls of oral history.
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Blight, James G., and David A. Welch, eds. Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis. London: Frans Cass, 1998.
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The Cuban Missile Crisis serves as a case study to facilitate a detailed examination of the intelligence/decision-makers relationship. The essays in this volume are crucial to an understanding of a state’s foreign policy and challenge the prevailing view that argues against interaction between the intelligence community and politicians.
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Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Vintage, 2009.
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Previous scholarship about the Cuban Missile Crisis relies almost exclusively on American sources. With three recently available resources—“the tape recordings of the ExComm meetings, publications from a series of international conferences of missile crisis participants and scholars, and archival materials from the former Soviet Union,” Dobbs’s book is a crucial new work on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Flank, Lenny, ed. At the Edge of the Abyss: A Declassified Documentary History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Petersburg, FL: Red and Black, 2010.
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Flank compiles American and Soviet declassified documents into one book that will inform scholars’ research into the Cuban Missile Crisis. The documents cover the Soviet and American discussions over a two-week period in October 1962.
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Frankel, Max. High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Presidio, 2004.
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Frankel, a journalist, covered the Cuban Missile Crisis and uses his memoirs as a basis for his analysis of the event and the players. Readers should read this with a critical eye. “The hearts and minds of the famous men who provoked and, in the nick of time, resolved the confrontation” informs Frankel’s account.
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Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
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This book is crucial for those researching the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not only does it add to the existing scholarship, but the authors also greatly improve the prevailing understanding of the Soviet–Cuban relationship during this period. They argue that personalities are important and that the Soviet/Cuban deception fueled Kennedy’s determination to have the missiles removed.
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Munton, Don, and David A. Welch. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Revised to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the crisis, this book contains a new conclusion in which the authors reassess the significance of the event fifty years later. Munton and Welch, relying upon both primary and secondary material, have written a concise history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This work provides scholars with a starting point for additional research.
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Stern, Sheldon M. The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
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Stern, a Kennedy Library historian, targets students and general readers with his assessment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a transcriber of ExComm meeting tapes, Stern has intimate knowledge of these materials. He argues that American actions, especially efforts to assassinate Castro, contributed to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Cuban Revolution

Although the Cuban Revolution occurred over five decades ago, a new wave of scholarship about this pivotal event in Cuban history has begun to emerge. This scholarship reflects new directions in the historiography. For example, Chomsky 2010 presents a sociohistorical narrative of the revolution while Klouzal 2006 chronicles the revolution through the women and resistance groups who participated in it. Some historians, including Eckstein (Eckstein 1986), focus on the impact of the revolution on the economy of Cuba. Farber 2006, on the other hand, argues that historians need to re-evaluate their conclusions about the origins of the Cuban Revolution, while Paterson 1995 argues that the United States chose the wrong path in its response to the revolution. While much of the scholarship addresses political, rather than military, aspects of the revolution, two works—Sweig 2004 and Hart Dávalos 2004—address the middle-class urban underground’s contribution to Castro’s victory. Finally, Shetterly 2007 narrates the story of an American from Ohio who joined Castro’s Rebel Army and eventually became a chief commandant.

Chomsky, Aviva. A History of the Cuban Revolution. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
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Chomsky has written a “concise socio-historical account” of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Chomsky’s monograph is a good starting point for researchers interested in this topic.
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Eckstein, Susan. “The Impact of the Cuban Revolution: A Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28.3 (July 1986): 502–534.
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500014031Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Eckstein argues that the revolution allowed Cuba to expand its productive base, but hindered its ability to compete in the trade market. As a result, Cuba has become mortgaged to foreign investors. Eckstein also concludes that no other Latin American country is as egalitarian as Cuba.
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Farber, Samuel. The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
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Farber attempts to explain the “radicalization” of the Cuban Revolution. It only took two years after the revolution for Cuba’s society and economy to become radically transformed. Farber credits multifaceted domestic and international causes with the radicalization of the revolution.
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Hart Dávalos, Armando. Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952–58: A Participant’s Account. New York: Pathfinder, 2004.
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This firsthand account chronicles the underground movement and its partnership with the Rebel Army as it successfully overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s American-supported dictatorship. Provides a low-level perspective of revolutionary effort that brought Fidel Castro to power.
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Klouzal, Linda Ann. “Rebellious Affinities: Narratives of Community, Resistance, and Women’s Participation in the Cuban Revolution (1952–1959).” PhD diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 2006.
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Klouzal focuses on the people, especially the women, and resistance groups who were involved in the revolution. She argues that revolutionaries had several social support networks that were linked to local communities. These networks included labor, student, and resistance movements.
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Paterson, Thomas G. Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195101201.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Patterson argues that, even if the Castro regime falls in the post–Cold War world, US–Cuban relations will not return to the prerevolutionary state. He also contends that the path that the United States took with regard to Cuba, during and after the revolution, was not in the United States’ best national interest.
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Shetterly, Aran. The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba’s Freedom. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2007.
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Shetterly relates the story of William Morgan, former high school janitor, who joined rebel forces to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. An interesting story about a man who was one of the few foreigners to become a chief commandant in Castro’s army. Provides an outsider’s perspective of the Cuban Revolution.
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Sweig, Julia. Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
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Using Cuban governmental documents, Sweig focuses on the middle-class Cubans in the urban underground, and she argues that they provided the foundation for the victory of Castro’s Rebel Army in the fight to overthrown Fulgencio Batista. Coupled with Shetterly 2007 and Hart Dávalos 2004, Sweig provides a starting point for researchers of the Cuban middle-class contribution to the revolution’s success.
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Intelligence Wars

The term “Cold War intelligence” conjures up images of “the spy who came in from the cold,” stolen atomic secrets, and efforts by the United States and the Soviet Union to win the war for intelligence. Spy films, although exciting and captivating, do not tell the whole story. In recent years a growing historiography is addressing the intelligence conflicts of the Cold War and highlighting numerous subtopics, including submarine, aerial, and technological espionage. While the list included here is by no means complete, the works are all useful as a starting point for research on both sides of the intelligence aisle. The encyclopedic work Trahair 2004 is perhaps the best starting point for research. Beschloss 1986, Blight and Welch 1998, and Brugioni 2010 each delve into an aspect of the CIA’s U-2 program while Lamphere and Shachtman 1986 chronicles the FBI’s efforts to bust a Soviet spy ring trying to steal atomic bomb secrets. Several works, including Hornblum 2011, Weinstein and Vassiliev 2000, and White 2005, focus on Soviet spies and the Soviet efforts to gather information in the United States. Finally, historians are beginning to look at Cold War espionage efforts by minor players as is evidenced by Bruce 2012.

Beschloss, Michael R. Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.
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A thorough investigation of the CIA’s U-2 program provides the vehicle for Beschloss’s revisionist interpretation of Eisenhower. Beschloss presents a balanced narrative that includes the Gary Powers debacle weighed against the intelligence benefits of four years of U-2 flights and portraits of key figures, particularly Eisenhower and Khrushchev. It is a good starting point for research on the U-2 flights.
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Blight, James G., and David A. Welch, eds. Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis. London: Frans Cass, 1998.
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The contributors focus on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis through the lens of three intelligence communities—that of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. The editors place the essays into a broader historical context and examine the implications of the essays for an assessment of the performance of the intelligence communities.
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Bruce, Gary. The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Bruce, by relying upon newly released documents and interviews, presents an in-depth analysis of the Stasi. Using two towns as case studies, Bruce draws conclusions about the ways the Stasi monitored a larger area. The Firm is particularly useful because Bruce chronicles the Stasi’s daily operations and interactions with civilians.
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Brugioni, Dino A. Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA and Cold War Aerial Espionage. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2010.
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Brugioni, who was a senior officer at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, provides an insider’s perspective in his account of Eisenhower, the CIA, and the U-2 program. Responsible for keeping the president informed, Brugioni relies upon his own experiences, as well as interviews with major participants, to detail the intricacies of the U-2 program from start to finish.
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Hornblum, Allen M. The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
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Hornblum presents an exhaustive analysis of Harry Gold, his life, and his actions. He ultimately argues that Gold was a good, caring, complex man, who would go out of his way to help people, and while he does not excuse Gold’s actions, he does make every effort to explain/justify why Gold made the decision to work for the Soviets.
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Lamphere, Robert J., and Tom Shachtman. The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent’s Story. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986.
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Shachtman and Lamphere (a former FBI agent) chronicle the FBI busting of a major Soviet spy ring that operated in the United States during the early Cold War. Most notable among Lamphere’s cases were those of Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and the Rosenbergs. An easy read, The FBI-KGB War provides one agent’s perspective of events that rocked the United States.
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Trahair, Richard C. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004.
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Trahair provides a starting point for researchers investigating all aspects of Cold War espionage, including biographies of spies and summaries of secret operations. Approximately 300 entries cover a wide range of topics—spies, spymasters, women, double agents, and so on.
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Weinstein, Alan, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era. New York: Modern Library, 2000.
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Weinstein and Vassiliev (a former agent) used KGB files to provide an in-depth analysis of Soviet espionage operations in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. They “humanize” the Soviet operatives and, in many cases, confirm US perceptions of these people and their work. The Haunted Wood, although it has some shortcomings, provides useful insight into Soviet espionage.
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White, G. Edward. Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182552.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Providing an in-depth account of events, White delves into the psychology of Hiss, who lied when claiming that he was innocent. He argues that childhood experiences—his father’s suicide and financial insecurity—caused Hiss to separate emotion from experience and that Hiss was a complex man who wore many faces. Hiss was a “moral monster”—an intersection of altruist and liar.
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Latin America

During the Cold War, Latin American countries frequently became contested areas as the United States supported anticommunist leaders, even those who became dictators, while the Soviet Union propped up communist governments. Both countries intervened overtly and covertly, militarily, politically, and economically to influence the outcomes of independence movements, revolutions, and elections. Much of the recent scholarship chronicles foreign intervention in Latin America from an American perspective. General works—Brand 2010 and Grandin and Joseph 2010—are a good starting point for students of Latin America’s Cold War. For those investigating Cold War intervention in Latin America by the United States, recent scholarship—Grow 2012, Rabe 2005, and Rabe 2011—provides the foundation for additional research.

Brand, Hal. Latin America’s Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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Brand describes the various crises that plagued Latin America during the Cold War—military, political, and cultural. Taking a multinational approach, he interweaves the global, regional, and local factors that together shaped the crises and concludes that the Cold War in Latin America was “a series of overlapping political, social, geostrategic, and ideological struggles.”
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Grandin, Greg, and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds. A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
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An edited work that analyzes a century of Cold War in Latin America—the cycle of revolutionary upheaval and insurgencies throughout the 20th century. The articles suggest a new approach to interpretations of revolution and political violence.
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Grow, Michael. U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
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Grow traces numerous US military interventions in Latin America by presenting eight case studies, including Guatemala in 1954 and Panama in 1989. He offers new interpretations of the interventions and explores not only why they occurred, but also what they signified. Important starting point for research.
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Rabe, Stephen G. U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
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Chronicling US intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Rabe argues that the CIA consistently engaged in operations to undermine the Marxist leader Cheddi Jagan, suggesting that the CIA funded unrest, including race riots. The CIA remains silent about Rabe’s assertions. The researcher must take that into consideration when using this research as a basis for further study.
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Rabe, Stephen G. The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Rabe argues that, despite its Cold War successes in Europe, the United States had a more problematic record in Latin America—human rights abuses, state terrorism, authoritarianism, and dictatorship. Rabe chronicles US intervention to destabilize constitutional governments in the name of anticommunism.
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Nuclear Weapons

Countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union used nuclear weapons as a diplomatic tool as East and West attempted to constrain each other. In recent years, many historians have focused on post–Cold War nuclear diplomacy, while others address the intersection of nuclear weapons and diplomacy and issues of deterrence. Bowie and Immerman 2000 and Sheehan 2009 assess how individuals—Eisenhower and Schriever, respectively—shaped or directed nuclear policy while Gaddis, et al. 1999 examines the nuclear policy of the major Cold War political leaders and their advisers. Bottie 1996 reassesses US diplomatic use of nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War era. Most of these works, with the exception of Gaddis, et al., focus primarily on the United States; Maloney 2007, on the other hand, unveils Canada as a Cold War nuclear power.

Bottie, Timothy J. Ace in the Hole: Why the United States Did Not Use Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War, 1945 to 1965. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
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Bottie relies upon newly released documents to reassess US nuclear policy and diplomacy from 1961 to the mid-1970s. Although he criticizes the handling of some cases, Bottie ultimately argues that nuclear deterrence worked and that nuclear weapons were an “ace in the hole.”
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Bowie, Robert R., and Richard H. Immerman. Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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A comprehensive analysis of Eisenhower’s Cold War policy, the cornerstone of which was nuclear deterrence. The authors argue that Eisenhower’s “New Look” policy provided the foundation of US Cold War strategy for three decades and that the impact of this policy has been appreciated only since the end of the Cold War.
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Gaddis, John Lewis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds. Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
DOI: 10.1093/0198294689.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors use biographies to analyze the different approaches to and the impact of nuclear diplomacy on the avoidance of World War III. The majority argue that nuclear diplomacy successfully prevented another worldwide conflict.
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Maloney, Sean M. Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada’s Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War. Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2007.
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Maloney describes Canada’s acquisition of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. He intertwines various pieces of the puzzle—including policy and strategy—of Canada’s Cold War nuclear power. He argues that this aspect of Canada’s history was hidden because it conflicted with the nation’s peacekeeping image.
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Sheehan, Neil. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon. New York: Random House, 2009.
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Sheehan focuses on Bernard Schriever as he chronicles the Cold War nuclear arms race. He argues that Schriever played a key role in the effort to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority over the United States and to develop safeguards against a nuclear holocaust.
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